Abstract [en]

Public project ownership is a way to speed up the environmental innovation and contributing with a more sustainable society and development. Project collaboration between business, public and college belongs to the Triple Helix model, which is considered to be an effective form of collaboration where invested resources can give greater returns. Companies participating in this kind of collaborative can improve their competitiveness, for example through the availability of new information and through active environmental work. Despite these benefits, project owners find it difficult to recruit participants to such projects in environmental development. Increased understanding of business expectations can give opportunities to a better communication from the project owner about the benefits that may arise. The knowledge about what expectations there is can enable for the project owners to add further benefits, which benefit the companies as well as the project owner's ability to recruit future participants, and not to forget increase the environmental development. However, there is a clear valuation issue about benefits such as contact creation, "Green Marketing" and learning. The valuation problem makes decision making difficult for decisions about abstract benefits, rather than those that can be clearly valued in monetary terms.

The study has used a hermeneutic interpretation perspective and a qualitative approach with a case study that used research design. The case study has been carried out in a project collaboration, where the project objective is to develop a tool for management work with continuous energy savings. Six companies participated in the project and interviews have been conducted with all six business leaders.

The study shows that all participating companies have goals similar to project collaboration and that corporate identity influences the decision to participate. There were economic motivations to participate but they prioritized differently. Advantages expected from project collaboration include image, sharing experience and new contacts to use in the future. We see that the project owner can provide more perceived benefits by making clearer business active environmental work more visible and facilitating social relations. To attract participants, it is important for companies that other companies want to participate as well and that they trust the project owner.